“You knew that?” I ask.
“I suspected it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
“Then what changed?”
Something tightens in Holt’s expression before he reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out his phone.
My stomach knots immediately.
“What is that?”
“I got a message earlier,” he says quietly.
He unlocks the screen and turns it toward me. And there it is. Michael’s name.
The breath leaves my lungs in a slow, uneven rush. The message itself is short. You should really keep a closer eye on her out there.
Ice crawls down my spine.
“What the hell…”
“He sent it from a fake number first,” Holt says. “But he slipped up. My buddy traced it back.”
I stare at the screen, my pulse pounding harder now.
“He knew where I was?”
Holt nods once. “Yeah.”
“And he wanted you to know he knew.”
“Seems that way.”
A sick feeling settles low in my stomach because that’s exactly the kind of thing Michael would do. Not a direct threat. Something quieter. Controlled. Calculated. Something designed to get under your skin and stay there.
“There’s more,” Holt says.
I force myself to look up at him.
“My friend started digging after the message came through,” he continues. “Not illegally. Just public stuff. Social media. Accounts tied together.”
My throat tightens.
“And?”
“There’s a connection between Kenzie and Michael.”
Everything inside me stills.
“How?”
Holt exhales slowly, like he’s trying to decide how much to say at once.
“She’d been posting things online for months,” he says. “A lot of vague stuff. About feeling invisible. Being overlooked. Getting passed over for someone else.”
